You won’t be able to triple boot Windows on a G5 (unless I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 5 or so years), BootCamp is only for Intel Macs, not PowerPC.

paradigital wrote on 2023-05-28, 10:45:

You won’t be able to triple boot Windows on a G5 (unless I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 5 or so years), BootCamp is only for Intel Macs, not PowerPC.

You may well be right...but this youtube video is indicating a triple boot is possible...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbO44y4UpKY
Like I said..I simply dont understand MAC OS at all...so all new(bie) to me.
🤣
First job in this process for me..is to clone the existing OS to a larger HD before any experiments..

I wouldn't even consider this if my gifted computer wasn't intel based..
see first photo.
cheers

That video is an Intel IMac (says so in the title).

I’ve just realised that yours is Intel, not G5. You might want to change the thread title and not refer to it as a G5 😉

In which case you can easily run BootCamp to run Windows alongside Mac OS, and as you’ve seen, Linux also.

The simplest way for you to clone your existing HDD is just add it as a USB disk and clone it using Carbon Copy Cloner or another 3rd party utility.

paradigital wrote on 2023-05-28, 11:56:

That video is an Intel IMac (says so in the title). […]
Show full quote

That video is an Intel IMac (says so in the title).

I’ve just realised that yours is Intel, not G5. You might want to change the thread title and not refer to it as a G5 😉

In which case you can easily run BootCamp to run Windows alongside Mac OS, and as you’ve seen, Linux also.

The simplest way for you to clone your existing HDD is just add it as a USB disk and clone it using Carbon Copy Cloner or another 3rd party utility.

You'll have to forgive my incorrect identification...title edited.
Like I say...this is all new to me.
🤣

Vipersan wrote on 2023-05-28, 10:01:

I read that the process involved starting the G5 with the command and R keys pressed..
..which would start up in recovery mode...?

That came with Lion (utility partition on disk), and/or the firmware update which launched shortly after and probably only for later models (utility partition in ramdisk downloaded on the spot), no big deal as it's for Lion only and it doesn't do more (okay, you get a web browser) than what you get by booting an OS X installer 😀

Vipersan wrote on 2023-05-28, 10:01:

I've also read a firewire hd caddy is the way to go...but I simply dont own one...

With an Intel Mac the utility is certainly reduced (you have good USB boot support, and even without a working Mac I had good success directly imaging a Mac OS DVD to a flash drive), but might be worth grabbing one the rare times you see one going for cheap!

Vipersan wrote on 2023-05-28, 10:01:

Not that there appears to be anything wrong with the 160gb drive in it...but I would like to eventually get at least 500gb in there...and have triple boot.
Mac OS ..a version of windows and a version of linux.
I believe this is possible with a program called Refit.

You don't need it (though it's certainly a nice Mac-styled boot manager), but keep in mind the annoyances involved - you're pretty much required* to use BIOS emulation and a nonstandard hybrid MBR to run Windows, you can't boot in BIOS mode from USB, yours is probably old enough to have the "Select CD-ROM boot type" bug meaning you can't boot any dual-mode BIOS/EFI optical discs$ without a real PS/2 keyboard you can't connect, etc...

* on my early 2011 MBP it means giving up AHCI unless you use a custom MBR that reconfigures the chipset to enable it, or you can install it anyway in EFI mode which means giving up the integrated soundcard, the latter was fixed since some 2013 (!) Air model...

$ Ubuntu long had a "Mac" version which really means "BIOS only", only recently-ish a decent guide to make EFI-only images came out, speaking of which - if you do really have a 32-bit EFI you get all the compatibility fun people with mid-2010s Windows tablets got 😀 🙁

Might want to read Rod's site (by the inventor of gdisk and refit, even though the latter has been partially succeeded by "refind") - I found it the best practical reference to GPT and EFI, pure and applied to Macs 😀
https://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/
https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/